LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) — A Lafayette pastor is speaking out about a video of him speaking to a crowd at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. capitol. He says the video is not what it seems to be and calls the video misleading.
Jay Miller, pastor of the Family Church in Lafayette and the president of Lafayette Christian Academy, admits he was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“Because of whom I am and because of what I do and because of what I represent, that clip sells but if you had the totality of the clip, we probably wouldn’t be here today,” Miller said.
He says he had originally gone to D.C. to hear former president Donald Trump’s speech, then followed a crowd to the capitol.
“We got to the capitol and realized that there was an angry mob trying to breach the Capitol, and Capitol Police are looking around with a megaphone. I said, ‘I’ll say something,'” Miller told News 10.
A 30-second video of him now circulating on social media shows him saying to the crowd, “We’re tired of being lied to. We’re tired of not having anybody have our backs when we’re down, and we’re tired of being put to the streets and pushed out.”
Miller says, however, there was a lot more to that video.
“What you didn’t hear is I say, ‘Guys, hey everyone! I know how you’re feeling. We feel like we’ve been lied to. We feel like there’s a lot of unanswered questions. I understand your confusion.’ But what you don’t hear me say is, I said, ‘This is not who we are. You’re being heard by being here. You don’t have to breach the Capitol. We don’t burn buildings. We don’t mug police. That’s not who we are. We’re being heard. You can hear the crowd actually turn on me. All of sudden, they started booing me. They start heckling and start to say, ‘You’re one of them,’ meaning you’re one of the Capitol Police,” Miller said.
In a longer version of the video, rioters can be heard saying, “I’m kind of confused, I guess. Maybe I misunderstood that. You work for them?”
“What the video doesn’t show is me with my back to the Capitol standing arm-in-arm with the Capitol Police,” he said. “For 35 minutes, I took bottles and fragments of things and throwing of food and items and goggles and helmets. We took all the brunt of that and pushed the crowd back for 35 minutes, and I can proudly say that our door was not breached at the Capitol.”
He says he wants people to know the video of him circulating online doesn’t show the full story.
“I love people,” Miller said. “I’m not violent. I’m not an insurrectionist. I don’t promote that.”
Miller says he doesn’t know the man who originally took the video of him at the Capitol that’s now circulating, and therefore can’t find or release the video in its entirety.